MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The Mexican Navy searched for
sharks in the ocean near Pacific surfing beaches on Monday,
after two bathers were killed and another maimed in a rare
spate of shark attacks.

Three boats and a helicopter patrolled the sea while Navy
and rescue officials scanned the horizon with binoculars from
popular beaches around the southwestern Mexican resort of
Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo. They warned surfers not to go far out.

"We've been monitoring the beaches; we've done
reconnaissance flights," Rear Adm. Arturo Bernal said, adding
that no big shark had been detected yet in the area.

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Surfer Bruce Grimes from Texas was bitten on the arm on
Saturday off nearby Playa Linda beach, making him the third
target of a shark attack in the area in a month.

Two attacks in April and May killed a Mexican and an
American -- the first shark deaths off Mexico's Pacific coast
in 30 years, according to official records.

Grimes, 49, said he paddled madly toward shore on his board
after feeling the unmistakable sandy skin of a shark glide
across the bottom of his feet as he straddled his surfboard.

"Then it bumped me really hard. I thought, 'That's
definitely a big shark.' I took about three more strokes and he
grabbed my arm," said Grimes, who pulled himself free and made
it to the beach. He managed to drive himself to a hospital,
where he received 100 stitches.

On Friday, Mexican surfer Osvaldo Mata, 21, died after a
6-foot-long (2-m-long) shark seized him, bit off one of his
hands and chomped on his thigh. That followed the death in late
April of a 24-year-old American who was mauled while surfing
nearby.

The Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo government is consulting with
experts to determine what could be causing the attacks.